Congolese crossing the southern border

What’s terrible here is that we’ve already seen what can happen when unvetted people are allowed into the country. In 2014, an ebola patient from Liberia, Eric Duncan, came to an unprepared Dallas hospital and spread the disease to two nurses, who in turn unwittingly exposed other places to the epidemic. A wedding gown shop in Ohio was shut down. The nurses had to undergo extensive treatment at a specialized facility in Maryland. At least one sued the hospital and now refuses to work as an intensive care nurse.

Duncan, meanwhile, gave conflicting stories to investigators on how he was exposed to the epidemic, and he certainly should not have been traveling after his exposure to previous victims. Whether he came her for medical care for ebola was unknown, but obviously, people who have this dreaded illness are not always going to be honest because the fact is, they are desperate.

What the Duncan case showed is that all it takes is just one unvetted migrant from the ebola epidemic area to throw the U.S. health system into disorder. You can bet some of these current Congolese migrants are going to be making asylum claims based on the known political violence from ISIS terrorists in their country. But any asylum claim based on that raises the possibility that they are coming from the ebola zones, and it’s unknown if they are desperately fleeing that or if they have been exposed or if they are going to be honest about it. Who knows if Customs and Border Protection officers are going to be able to keep them out if they are, anyway?